Poster Presentation The Australasian Society for Immunology 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting

Distinctive cellular immunity residues at the at the human fetomaternal interface (#320)

John Miles 1 2 3 4 , Thomas Watkins 1 3 4 , Helen McGuire 5 , Brigitte Santner-Nanan 6 , Amy Ransier 7 , Sam Darko 1 7 , Mingjing Hu 8 9 , Oscar Haigh 1 , Kristen Radford 10 , Scott Burrows 1 , David Price 2 7 , Daniel Douek 7 , Ralph Nanan 2 7
  1. QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute, Herston, QLD, Australia
  2. Department of Infection, Immunity and Biochemistry, Henry Wellcome Building, Cardiff University School of Medicine, Cardiff, UK
  3. Centre for Biodiscovery and Molecular Development of Therapeutics, AITHM, James Cook University, Cairns, QLD, Australia
  4. School of Medicine, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
  5. Centenary Institute of Medical Research Foundation, New South Wales, Australia
  6. Sydney Medical School Nepean, The University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  7. Human Immunology Section, Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, USA
  8. Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney,, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  9. Charles Perkins Centre, University of Sydney,, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  10. Mater Research Institute, University of Queensland, Translational Research Institute, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

In humans, the large majority of lymphocytes residue in tissues and not the circulating blood. However, little is known about the structure and composition of these tissues-specific T cell repertoires. This is particularly true at the human fetomaternal interface which performs the remarkable feat of pathogen defence while maintaining immune tolerance towards a foreign foetus. Here, we performed the first high-dimensional analysis of T cell subsets at the human fetomaternal interface using TCR deep sequencing and transcriptional profiling and contrasted these populations with paired samples from maternal blood, paternal blood and cord blood. We show the decidua maintains a controlled ratio of recirculating and resident T cells which is different for CD8+ versus CD4+ T cell linages. We also identified distinct phenotypes in placental T cell subsets not previously observed in classic T cell lineages suggesting a very unique microenvironment. Together, our data provide the first comprehensive map of the cellular immunity at the human fetomaternal interface.